PUBLIC DOMAIN

Even die-hard Democrats now support congressional vows to reduce government and eliminate waste.

But cut "Great Performances"? Silence "The McLaughlin Group"?

Eliminate Hercule Poirot?

Once House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggested privatizing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, fear erupted like an aneurysm in the hearts of artists, TV enthusiasts and "Nature" addicts. Without CPB-the federal entity that funds the public broadcast system and its 700 satellite stations, including the Chicago area's WTTW-Ch. 11, what would the TV landscape be like?

To many television enthusiasts, a world without MacNeil-Lehrer, "Sesame Street" and the likes of the Three Tenors is unthinkable.

Warned PBS president Ervin Duggan in one interview, "I don't think the Republicans' Contract With America was a contract to kill public television."

Perhaps a better way to look at this issue-clouded with uncertainty, confusion and some hyperbole on all sides-is that the imminent demise of public television has been widely exaggerated. Even if Gingrich's prescription were to come true-and there's no guarantee it will-public television is likely to continue in some form, albeit altered in product and quality.

Gingrich says he wants to immediately "zero out" funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which this year is getting $285.6 million in federal tax money.

But Republicans add that the bulk of public television support no longer comes from this congressional subsidy anyway. Nationwide, only 14 percent of the stations' aggregate annual budgets comes from the federal authorization. The remaining 86 percent comes from private sources, corporate funding and those interminable telethon pledge weeks. Eliminating federal support would not by any stretch kill public TV, they say.

"I'm a longtime supporter of public broadcasting," says U.S. Rep. John Porter (R-Ill.), whose North Shore constituency coincidentally is a mainstay of WTTW's support and who, in the reconstituted Congress, is the new chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that directly oversees CPB funding.

"But in these difficult times, with huge deficits, we have to take a fresh look at whether we can continue to provide support as we have in the past," Porter added.

"The answer," he concludes, "is probably no."

Expect strong words on this tempestuous issue.

"There are certain things the government simply has to do," insists U.S. Rep. Sidney Yates (D-Ill.), the reigning dean of arts support in Congress. "CPB is educational, and it fills a wish, if not a need, in most of the people in this country."

"Who knows if federal support is withdrawn what the impact might be? In the past, when the arts have been cut, private money has not been forthcoming," Yates says.

"A diminution of federal support may actually result in a diminution of private support," he adds. "Then where would public TV be?"

"Let's strip away the euphemisms here," Duggan said recently at a news conference. "The word `privatizing' is a euphemism. Florence Nightingale leans over me, saying, `We're going to privatize you. This will help you. You will feel better,' but the wig slips away, and I see the features of Dr. Kevorkian."

"This is the most serious threat to public television in 25 years," says Richard W. Carlson, president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and a former head of Voice of America, appointed by George Bush. "I understand the desire to balance the budget. But many smaller stations depend on us for 30 or even 40 percent, and they might crash and burn. The whole system may even be in jeopardy."

But Porter insists the system could find ways to survive without federal dollars. "At WTTW alone, they get over 95 percent of their funding from somewhere else. The experts would tell you around the country we've probably allowed too many outlets to proliferate over the years. The San Francisco area has 11 all by itself."

By comparison, Chicago supports only two, WTTW and WYCC-Ch. 20, the city-college educational channel. (There's also a third available in some areas, from Indiana.) "If there were no federal funds, you might find some outlets that wouldn't survive, especially those serving smaller communities," Porter says. "But our outlets shouldn't be involved, and quality programming shouldn't be endangered. You won't lose MacNeil-Lehrer if CPB ceased to exist."

Marty McLaughlin, vice president of corporate affairs at WTTW, concurs that the whole debate doesn't have to mean do-or-die. "These are tough decisions," he says of congressional cost-cutters. "We have to step back and see where we fit in."

McLaughlin agrees that WTTW, with its 95 percent non-federal funding, wouldn't face a total demise. "There may be fewer (new) programs in a year," he says. "There might be more reruns. But there's no question WTTW will remain a vital part of the area's television mix, even in a worst-case scenario of the restructuring of the Corporation."

As with so many budget matters now before Congress, the devil will be in the details. "We've heard a lot of rhetoric," McLaughlin observes. "But we've yet to see any proposed legislation."

In many ways, public television could be labeled a victim of its own success. In the 1960s, bold thinkers offered a refreshing lineup of commercial-free experiments that served as the lone alternative to three flashy, all-too-similar networks in many areas in the country.

But thanks to the proliferation of cable channels in the 1980s, public TV has become just another shop in an estimated 70-channel marketplace, one envisioned as offering as many as 500 channels in the future.

Outlets like the Arts and Entertainment Network (A&E) offer such coffee-table PBS fare as "Sherlock Holmes." MTV and the Comedy Channel, meanwhile, go in for the feisty experimentation once supplied by "The Great American Dream Machine" or "An American Family" on public television.

And CNN has successfully modeled its public-affairs programming on the likes of McLaughlin and MacNeil-Lehrer. In a sign of the times, Robert MacNeil has announced his retirement from the latter program at the end of the year. Less publicized, but perhaps more ominous, is the fact that a subsidiary of the cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. recently bought a two-thirds interest in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, which produces that show and will now produce others for cable and network television in addition to public broadcasting.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, or so the argument seems to be going.

But other supporters argue that public TV's mission is as unique and fundamental as that of universities and museums. And, they add, not everybody can afford cable.

Somewhat subtly lost in the debate is the incalculable role public television has played over the past 30 years both in bringing more attention to art and in improving the quality of the art itself.

"I liken it to public libraries," says CPB's Carlson. "It isn't just what public TV did for the masters in dance, figures like George Balanchine and Martha Graham," says Daniel Duell, Ballet Chicago artistic director and for years a principal dancer with New York City Ballet.

"It popularized the experimental, too, giving Twyla Tharp a national reputation," he adds. "To this day, Chicago's Hubbard Street Dance Company people tell me their first special on WTTW years ago to some extent made them what they are now."

It is hard to place a value on it. "It's an air, a spirit of the culture that's breathed into the atmosphere," Duell says. Appearances by such performers as Arthur Fiedler and telecasts of full-scale operas became almost commonplace.

"Research shows a goodly percentage of folks who watch classical music and opera programming aren't elitist at all, but cover a wide, diverse spectrum of the population," Carlson says. "And that has meant inestimable help for local symphonies, classical music societies and opera companies all over the land for decades."

At stake, in other words, is a classic vision of democracy, dating to the Greeks and their golden age, in which peace, national defense and cultural enrichment all play a part.

Then there were those raging deficits in France just before the bloody Revolution in the late 18th Century.

Porter's subcommittee began hearing from witnesses Thursday and will continue hearings on its portion of the budget through the spring. The final budget probably won't leave a joint conference committee until sometime next summer.

In the byzantine complexity that rules the budget in Congress, privatizing CPB, if that's to be done, will happen in another committee. But Porter warns that proposed cuts could come from his subcommittee hearings. That's especially likely because, in another labyrinthine irony, at the moment PBS is actually budgeted, on paper, through 1998 and therefore subject to what in Congress are called rescission cutbacks.

Paradoxically, because it is in a category of long-range funding, its monies are termed "unobligated" and can be more easily cut in the coming weeks.

"Our job is to look at this whole subject intelligently and try to determine what would actually happen," Porter says. "My guess is that strong stations like WTTW will continue to thrive. If they're good, they'll survive. If they aren't, they won't."